fumes, which was hardly noticed by the driver. Subsequent examination of the boot lid showed very slight staining, presumably with the carbon of the exhaust fumes, on the lefthand corner covering only about six inches. I then discovered quite conclusively that by having all the windows closed and the direct ventilator on that the problem could be overcome. I eventually overcame the problem more satisfactorily by carrying out the suggestion of Dr Wood of extending the exhaust pipe and directing it downwards. I think a corollary of this idea is a consideration of an accumulation of factors which could lead to drowsiness while driving, with possible accidents. The combination of factors, each small in itself is (i) smoking (which, I understand, produces about 5% carboxy haemoglobin in the blood); (ii) entry of exhaust fumes even in an apparently wellmaintained car; (iii) natural sleepiness on a long drive; (iv) altitude (915 metres to 1220 metres which is not uncommon on our roads would reduce the partial pressure of arterial oxygen about 8 mm Hg to 10mm Hg); (v) chronic obstructive lung disease, which could even reduce the partial pressure of oxygen in the arterial blood at sea level to 70 mm Hg in a person otherwise active; and (vi) last, but not least, a small amount of alcohol could be the last straw in this sheaf of factors. JAMES ISBISTER. 66 Pacific Highway, St Leonards, N.S.W. 2065.


The ecology, behavior, and life history strategies of waterfowl are inseparably linked to that unique avian attribute, feathers. Waterfowl rely on flight capabilities to migrate, to fully exploit the resources of wetland and upland communities, and to escape life-threatening events. The insulation provided by contour and down feathers allows waterfowl to use a wide range of habitats and protects them from temperature extremes. Plumage is important not only for species recognition during courtship, but also for cryptic coloration of females during incubation. However, feathers become worn and must be periodically replaced. The process of feather renewal, or molt, is a critical event in the lives of birds. Despite the obvious importance of the molt, relatively little attention has been devoted to managing waterfowl during this period. Unlike most birds, ducks, geese, and swans share the unusual trait of a complete, simultaneous wing molt that renders them flightless for 3 to 5 weeks during the postbreeding period. Concurrently, these waterfowl also renew their tail and body feathers. In addition to this postbreeding molt, ducks undergo a second yearly molt to renew all but their flight feathers. Here, I describe the nutrition, energetics, and management of molting adult ducks and geese, with emphasis on the period of molt when birds are flightless. Nutrition and Energetics


Context: We have previously described increased serum levels of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) and stimulated insulin in daughters of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), suggesting that these girls may have an altered ovarian follicular development which may be modulated by insulin. However, the specific relationship between serum AMH and insulin levels during each Tanner stage of puberty in this cohort has not been established. Objective: The aim of our study was to establish the relationship between AMH and poststimulated insulin serum concentrations during each stage of puberty in daughters of women with PCOS (PCOSd), compared to daughters of control women (Cd). Design: We studied 135 PCOSd and 93 Cd classified according to their Tanner stage. Gonadotrophins, sex steroids, sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), and AMH were determined in a fasting sample. Ovarian volume was measured by pelvic ultrasound. In addition, in both groups we performed an oral glucose tolerance test with measurements of glucose and insulin. Results: Anti-Müllerian hormone levels were significantly higher in PCOSd compared to Cd at all Tanner stages. Daughters of women with PCOS having AMH concentrations greater than 2 standard deviation (SD) above the mean AMH value for the Cd group showed decreased serum follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) concentrations and increased stimulated levels of insulin during Tanner stages I, II, and III. Conclusions: Anti-Müllerian hormone levels are increased in PCOSd during all stages of puberty. We suggest that those PCOSd with the highest AMH levels probably represent a group of girls with more severe ovarian dysfunction and metabolic derangements.


Faropenem (FRPM) is active against extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacterales, but evidence for its efficacy is lacking. This study determined the correlation between the susceptibility by disk diffusion method and the MIC of FRPM for third-generation cephalosporin-resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, and the effectiveness of FRPM for the treatment of urinary tract infection (UTI) caused by these two bacteria in a retrospective cohort analysis. ABSTRACT Faropenem (FRPM) is active against extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacterales, but evidence for its efficacy is lacking. This study determined the correlation between the susceptibility by disk diffusion method and the MIC of FRPM for third-generation cephalosporin-resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, and the effectiveness of FRPM for the treatment of urinary tract infection (UTI) caused by these two bacteria in a retrospective cohort analysis. Of the 48 third-generation cephalosporin-resistant clinical isolates tested, 44 isolates produced ESBL, and 8 isolates produced AmpC, including 4 isolates produced both ESBL and AmpC. Thirty-seven isolates had an FRPM MIC of ≤1 mg/L, and seven had an FRPM MIC of 2 mg/L. An FRPM MIC of >2 mg/L was observed with four isolates. In a retrospective cohort analysis, 63 patients with UTI treated with FRPM were identified. All isolates of ESBL-producing E. coli (n = 54) and K. pneumoniae (n = 9) treated with FRPM showed disk diffusion zone diameters larger than 16.0 mm (estimated MIC, 2.2 mg/L). All patients completed the scheduled treatment courses with FRPM, but 28- and 90-day relapses happened in 10 patients (16%) and 16 patients (25%), respectively. No significant risk factors for the 28- and 90-day relapses were found. FRPM can be used according to disk diffusion susceptibility testing in UTI. Further investigations are necessary to assess the clinical breakpoint of FRPM for ESBL-producing Enterobacterales and the candidates most likely to benefit from using FRPM.


generally accepted theory of aetiology. Most of my cases appeared to be infective in origin, and two of them followed instrumentation. It does appear that the disease is associated with poor hygiene. Fournier's gangrene was fairly common in Europe and North America at the turn of the century but is now rarely reported from these areas. More recent reports of more than one case have come from areas with poor living standards.4-6 It was suggested that the patient described may have had an increased tendency to vascular insufficiency because of a high titre of cold haemagglutinins in his serum. It is possible that this and the trauma he suffered were enough to precipitate gangrene of the scrotum by vascular thrombosis. Several au-hors have proposed that the cause of Fournier's gangrene is an arterial thrombosis precipitated by an infection, analogous to cavernous sinus thrombosis.6-8 This case could be compatible with the thrombosis theory of aetiology.-I am, etc.,


Effective reduction of false alarms in large-scale video surveillance is rather challenging, especially for applications where abnormal events of interest rarely occur, such as abandoned object detection. We develop an approach to prioritize alerts by ranking them, and demonstrate its great effectiveness in reducing false positives while keeping good detection accuracy. Our approach benefits from a novel representation of abandoned object alerts by relative attributes, namely static ness, foreground ness and abandonment. The relative strengths of these attributes are quantified using a ranking function[19] learnt on suitably designed low-level spatial and temporal features. These attributes of varying strengths are not only powerful in distinguishing abandoned objects from false alarms such as people and light artifacts, but also computationally efficient for large-scale deployment. With these features, we apply a linear ranking algorithm to sort alerts according to their relevance to the end-user. We test the effectiveness of our approach on both public data sets and large ones collected from the real world.


The dissolution of the Soviet Union has caused conflicts of many different types in the Caucasus region. Among them, the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh turned out to be the most intractable dispute since it had the properties of a modern global conflict in terms of territorial, ethnic and national dimensions, intertwined with a historical burden of ancient grievances. Many major states and regional actors such as Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and OSCE, initiated third party mediation efforts in order to resolve the conflict and to terminate violence. Today, many critics argue that the mediators were to blame for the delay of a peaceful settlement since they gave first priority to their own interests and stalled the negotiation process. Thus this case is important as it allows testing whether mediators are always beneficial to negotiations.


Subsidies and cross-subsidies in the energy sector are common throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In Belarus, revenues from an industrial tariff on electricity are used to cross-subsidize heating for households. Input-output (IO) data and a household consumption survey are used to analyze the distributional impacts of this cross-subsidization. This paper illustrates cost shares and electricity-intensity of different sectors and consumption categories and uses the IO data to obtain first-order estimates of the distributional incidence of policy reform. The paper then analyzes distributional impacts of subsidy reform with a Computable General Equilibrium model. Although poorer households benefit from reduced heating costs, the increase in prices of other consumer goods due to higher electricity prices more than offsets the benefits they receive from the subsidies. The analysis finds that the current cross-subsidies are regressive, and policy reform would be highly progressive.


DOD DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT Approved for public release; distribution unlimited The findings in this report are not to be construed as an official Department of the Army position unless so designated by other authorized documents


Introduction: Blood component therapy is widely used in an oncology center. Fresh frozen plasma (FFP) transfusions are mainly used for the treatment of certain clinical conditions such as coagulation derangements. Transfusion audits are important to understand clinical transfusion practices. This study evaluates the utilization pattern of FFP in a tertiary care oncology center. Materials and Methods: Retrospective analysis of 1338 FFP transfusions in 216 patients was done for 3 months. Analysis according to age, sex, clinical indications, requesting clinical unit, time of requisition and pre- and post-transfusion prothrombin time (PT), activated plasma thromboplastin time (aPTT), and international normalized ratio (INR) was carried out. Results: Of 1338 FFP transfusions, 63% transfusions were in males and 37% in females. Adult patients received 75% while pediatrics received 25% of all transfusions. Surgical oncology patients received maximum transfusions (56%), followed by medical oncology (41%) and least by radiation oncology (3%). Based on clinical indications, patients with deranged coagulation profile required maximum transfusions (55%) followed by bleeding patients (43%) and least for patients with disseminated intravascular coagulation (2%). Mean pre- and post-transfusion PT, aPTT, and INR values were 25.6 s, 36.8 s, 2.1 and 20.56 s, 31.9 s, and 1.6 respectively; it was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion: FFP transfusion plays a significant role in oncology patients as many of them experience deranged coagulation during the course of treatment. Evaluation of utilization pattern would help in better understanding of clinical transfusion practices.


The recently emerged SARS-Cov-2 causing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is particularly virulent in the elderly while children are largely spared. Here, we explored the potential role of cross-reactive immunity acquired from vaccinations and exposure to common human pathogens in protection and pathology of COVID-19. To that end, we sought for peptide matches to SARS-CoV-2 (identity ≥ 80%, in at least 8 residues) in the proteomes of 25 human pathogens and in vaccine antigens, and subsequently predicted their T and B cell reactivity to identify potential cross-reactive epitopes. We found that viruses subject to pediatric vaccinations do not contain cross-reactive epitopes with SARS-CoV-2 to support that they can provide any general protection against COVID-19. Likewise, common viruses including rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza virus and several herpesviruses are also poor or null sources of cross-reactive immunity to SARS-CoV-2, discarding that immunological memory against these viruses can have any protective or pathological role in COVID-19. In contrast, we found combination vaccines for treating diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis infectious diseases (DTP vaccine) to be significant sources of potential cross-reactive immunity to SARS-CoV-2. DTP cross-reactive epitopes with SARS-CoV-2 include numerous CD8 and CD4 T cell epitopes with broad population coverage and potentially neutralizing B cell epitopes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. Worldwide children receive several DTP vaccinations, including three-four doses the first year of life and one at 4-6 year of age. Moreover, a low antigenic Tdap dose is also given at age 9-14. Thereby, children may well be protected from SARS-CoV-2 through cross-reactive immunity elicited by DTP vaccinations, supporting testing in the general population to prevent COVID-19.


We investigate whether mutual funds whose investors and stocks are decoupled (i.e., investor location does not coincide with that of the stock holdings) benefit from a natural hedge as they have fewer outflows during market downturns and fewer inflows during upturns. Using a sample of equity mutual funds from 26 countries, we find that funds with higher investor-stock decoupling exhibit higher performance and this is more pronounced during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We also find that decoupling allows fund managers to take less risk, be more active, and tilt their portfolios toward smaller and less liquid stocks.


: Due to this fact specialists underline the necessity of implementation of constant drug testing system of servicemen. The most effective researches individuals suffering from substance abuse are sample and control survey. Promising areas of prevention of addictive disease include the use of modem technologies for early detection of drug narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, using the psychophysiological and laboratory techniques. The most common rapid laboratory procedure is the use of test strips (tablets) based immunoassay analysis. To facilitate the evaluation of the results is increasingly incorporated hardware and software systems based on photometric detection. The work done on the testing of such complexes allowed us to determine the algorithm of screening soldiers to assess the effectiveness of various hardware and software systems and identify promising technologies to identify individuals with addictive disorders.


OBJECTIVE
The aims of this study were to estimate the prevalence and investigate the comorbidity and potential consequences of DSM-III personality disorders in the community.

METHOD
A total of 810 adults were examined in the second stage of the Eastern Baltimore Mental Health Survey in 1981, part of the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area program. The subjects were directly examined by psychiatrists using a semi-structured method that allowed diagnosis of all DSM-III personality disorders as well as other DSM-III psychiatric disorders.

RESULTS
The prevalence of personality disorders in these adults was 5.9% (9.3% when provisional cases were included). Men had higher rates than women, and subjects who were separated or divorced had the highest rates. There was little comorbidity among specific personality disorders. Subjects with personality disorders were significantly more likely to have a history of sexual dysfunctions, alcohol use disorders, and drug use disorders as well as suicidal thoughts and attempts. In addition, they reported significantly more life events in the past year. Among subjects with any axis I disorder, those with personality disorders were judged by the psychiatrists to be more in need of treatment; however, only 21% were receiving treatment.

CONCLUSIONS
Personality disorders are relatively common in the community. They are associated with axis I disorders and life events. Only one-fifth of the individuals who qualify for diagnoses of personality disorders in the community are receiving treatment.


This thesis proposes a new control law for the purpose of providing improved tracking and contouring performance of robotic manipulators. The rationale behind the development of this controller involves the hybridization of existing proportional-derivative (PD) and sliding mode control (SMC) laws. The new control law retains similar ease of implementation as traditional PD/PID controllers with the added benefit of a nonlinear switching component inherent from sliding mode control systems. In addition, it eliminates the need for a priori knowledge of the system dynamics that are required in standard SMC laws. The stability analysis of the proposed control law is conducted through the Lyapunov method. Simulations using linear and nonlinear contours, and under varying dynamic conditions are performed in order to compare its performances to existing control schemes. The proposed hybrid PD-SMC control law is proven to provide good, robust tracking and contouring performance


In this work, we report on a reliable fabrication strategy, based on the dip coating technique, for integrating a microgel monolayer onto the nanostructured optical fiber tip in a controlled fashion. The creation of a uniform microgel monolayer with a specific coverage factor is crucial for controlling the probes responsivity to a pre-defined target parameter. Specifically, in the case study of Lab-on-Fiber plasmonic probes, we demonstrated that microgel coverage factors exceeding 90% allow to optimize the probe responsivity to both temperature and pH, chosen as benchmark stimuli. Moreover, with the aim of providing a design tool for MG assisted devices, we also propose an analytical model describing the light-MG layer interaction, as a function of the external stimulus applied. Overall, this study opens the way for the development of engineered microgels assisted Lab-on-Fiber probes for sensing applications.


Ruxolitinib is the first available JAK inhibitor (JAKi) therapy for amelioration of constitutional symptoms or splenomegaly in myelofibrosis (MF). Duration of response varies, as patients discontinue ruxolitinib due to disease progression or drug toxicity. Ruxolitinib failure is a poorly defined clinical entity, but may include suboptimal or lost spleen response, worsening cytopenias, accelerated or blast phase (AP/BP) progression, or non-hematologic side effects. It is not clear what other clinical parameters should be considered indicative of JAKi failure.
 Leukocytosis is a known prognostic factor in MF and is included in various prognostic models. We have observed that some patients on stable doses of JAKi therapy develop progressive leukocytosis in the absence of other signs of MF progression. The significance of this event is not known, and it is not clear whether the onset of leukocytosis should prompt changes in clinical management.
 To assess the clinical significance of emergent leukocytosis, we evaluated leukocyte counts in our database of MF patients receiving Ruxolitnib or Momelotinib as first-line JAKi therapy. We defined emergent leukocytosis as any of:New onset of WBC ≥25 x 109/L in patients with WBC ≤12.5 x 109/L at JAKi start.Doubling of WBC from the nadir value in patients with WBC >12.5 x 109/L at JAKi start and nadir WBC >12.5 x 109/L.WBC ≥25 x 109/L in patients with WBC > 12.5 x 109/L at JAKi start after attaining a nadir WBC ≤12.5 x 109/L.
 Leukocytosis had to be sustained over consecutive blood counts at least one month apart and had to occur in the absence of infection, steroid therapy, AP/BP transformation, splenectomy or JAKi dose reduction. Exclusion criteria included concurrent hematologic diagnoses, and splenectomy or AP/BP MF preceding JAKi initiation.
 Of 290 patients with MF receiving JAKi therapy, 217 met study criteria. Of these 217 patients, 27 developed emergent leukocytosis while receiving JAKi. The cumulative incidence of leukocytosis was 4%, 10% and 15% at 1, 3, and 5 years from the start of JAKi therapy, respectively. Transformation to AP/BP, splenectomy, bone marrow transplant, or death from any cause were considered as competing risks in the calculation of cumulative incidence. In a multivariate analysis, clinical parameters associated with emergent leukocytosis included presence of baseline anemia (HR 4.94 [95% CI, 1.13-21.53]; p = 0.03) or leukocytosis (HR 5.01 [95% CI, 1.44-17.41]; p = 0.01) at JAKi start and female gender (HR 0.21 for male [0.08-0.06]; p=0.002). Baseline leukocytosis as WBC ≥25 x 109/L, and anemia was as a hemoglobin <100g/L.
 In patients with available targeted sequencing performed prior to JAKi therapy (n=141, 65%), TET2 mutations were associated with increased risk of leukocytosis (HR 5.48 [95% CI, 1.73-17.35]; p=0.004), but JAK2, CALR, MPL or ASXL1 mutations were not.
 Among 27 patients who experienced emergent leukocytosis, 21 were deceased while 6 are in ongoing follow-up. Median overall survival calculated from the date of leukocytosis was 14 months [95% CI, 8.6-27.9]. Overall, 7 patients transformed to AP/BP, 7 died from progressive MF, 4 underwent transplant, one underwent splenectomy, 6 died of miscellaneous causes and two remain on first-line JAKi without any complicating events.
 Among 27 patients experiencing leukocytosis, paired samples for molecular analysis at JAKi initiation and at the time of leucocytosis were available in 21 (78%). Results from targeted sequencing of a panel of 49 myeloid genes were available from 4 patients with paired samples (Table 1). New mutations at leukocytosis were seen in NRAS and CEBPA in the first patient, KRAS and SH2B3 in the second, and CBL in the third. The fourth patient acquired no new mutations but demonstrated marked expansion of a dominant clone. The remaining 17 paired samples have been submitted for sequencing with results pending.
 In summary, MF patients with baseline anemia, leukocytosis, or female gender are at higher risk for emergent leucocytosis while on JAKi therapy. The median overall survival of 14 months in patients who experience emergent leukocytosis is comparable to that observed in patients following ruxolitinib failure. Our data also suggest that onset of leukocytosis may be indicative of underlying clonal evolution, which will need to be confirmed in a larger number of patients. These findings suggest consideration of emergent leukocytosis as a criterion for JAKi failure in MF.

 Maze: Novartis: Honoraria; Pfizer: Consultancy; Takeda: Research Funding. Gupta:Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Sierra Oncology: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Bristol MyersSquibb: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Pfizer: Consultancy; Incyte: Honoraria, Research Funding.


Insulated Glass Units (IGUs) typically consist of two glass layers, either monolithic and/or laminated sections, that mechanically interact via an hermetically-sealed air (or gas) cavity, and a series of linear spacer connections along their edges. In this paper, based on the experimental tests for small-scale IGU joints under pure shear and IGU prototypes in bending discussed in "Part I", a special care is spent for the Finite Element (FE) numerical characterization and analysis of these composite systems, with a focus on the actual mechanical properties and load-bearing mechanism for the involved components. Major advantage is taken from the full 3D solid geometrical description of the connection components and the gas cavity infill. The actual role of both primary and secondary sealant layers is first assessed. Further support is derived from analytical calculations for the connection efficiency assessment, based on the adaptation of simplified formulations of literature. Finally, a calculation example is proposed to assess the magnitude of load sharing phenomena, based on FE numerical and analytical calculations for selected configurations.


A study of sediment transport was carried out in the New England area of the United States where large quantities of sediments and other debris accumulate along roads. These sediments are mostly transported by roadway runoff and stormwater drainage structures, where present, tend to concentrate them. However, polluted sediments might also find their way into ecologically sensitive areas. Our research aimed at tracking the transport of these sediments as they move along a road. Further, we attempted to quantify the rate by which the sediments were transported. Glass microbeads in the size range of sand were released as a tracer of sediment transport at six comparable locations. Over a period of 10 months, their movement was tracked using microscopy. Our results indicate that this type of tracer was successful in following along the sediment transport. More research is required to establish this new method under different stormwater runoff regimes or different roadside maintenance conditions.


This paper is a quantitatively-oriented theoretical study into the interaction between housing prices, aggregate production, and household behavior over a lifetime. We develop a life-cycle model of a production economy in which land and capital are used to build residential and commercial real estates. We find that, in an economy where the share of land in the value of real estates is large, housing prices react more to an exogenous change in expected productivity or the world interest rate, causing a large redistribution between net buyers and net sellers of houses. Changing financing constraints, however, has limited effects on housing prices.


common, open interfaces; and In component technology, advancements in analog-to-digital converters or digital-to-analog converters to increase sampling and resolution capabilities; novel techniques to increase memory densities; and advancements in processing and reconfigurable logic technology, each reducing power consumption and improving performance in harsh environments. Use of quantum entanglement or innovative breakthroughs in quantum information physics to specifically address curious effects and critical unknowns relevant to revolutionary improvements in communicating data, information, or knowledge between independent entities across space-time. Methods or techniques that demonstrate extremely novel means of effectively packaging, storing, encrypting (e.g., quantum key distribution), and/or transferring information or knowledge in space-to-space or space-to-ground links; Innovative methods of using X-ray or radio pulsar signals for precise navigation or positioning of spacecraft. Small, low mass, reliable detectors, improvements in position accuracy, digital signal processing advances for time of arrival, drift estimation, and position estimation; Development of nano-scale communication devices and systems (e.g., FET arrays, nano-antennas, nano-transceivers, etc.) for nano-spacecraft applications; RF Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) devices. MEMS devices have low spatial volume, are lightweight, and have low-power consumption, making them attractive to operate as high Q components and perform frequency selectivity (i.e., agile pre-selectors, multi-couplers, and diplexers). Selectivity, or Q, for band pass filters currently comes at an unacceptably high penalty in size and mass. At present, most high rejection diplexers for space-based radios are quite large. To build and design high performance, tightly coupled, low volume space radios, compact selectivity-determining devices are a critical enabler. Most high Q filters above 400MHz, such as inter-digital filters and others involving resonant cavities, are wholly mechanical assemblies which can be "folded" in their design and lend themselves to micro machining techniques; and Other areas of investigation to consider lie within the area between MEMS and micro-machined devices, including electromechanically tuned filters, 3D micro-machined RF resonators, filter configurations consisting of cantilevered structures, as well as carbon nano-tube waveguides. Development of RF MEMS circuitry that applies and demonstrates significant advantages that proliferate the implementation of next-generation lightweight communications systems.


Abstract We describe a neonate with critical coarctation of the aorta. Since treatment with Prostaglandin El had failed to reopen the arterial duct, and surgery was deemed to be associated with an unacceptably high risk in this unstable neonate, it was decided to perform balloon dilation of the coarctation as a palliative procedure to stabilize the patient. Balloon angioplasty failed to reduce the pressure gradient across the coarctation, so a stent was implanted retrogradely as an emergency procedure. Subsequently, the stented segment was resected surgically and end-to-end anastomosis created without complications at seven months of age.


When Volvo Car Group is launching a new car, extensive development work has preceded the launch, in the form of so called test objects. Test object are used to; test and verify that parts and production process are of the right quality and according to a set specification. Since 2010, Volvo Car Group has expanded their business in the Chinese market and opened new facilities with the aim of making China, their second home market. Volvo Car Group has opened new plants in China, which should produce cars for the Chinese market, thus test objects needs to be built in China as well. However, still a lot of activities are carried out in Europe, and a lot of parts are sent from Europe to China operations. From previous test object builds in China it has been seen long delays, with the consequence of delayed launch for the production car. Thereby, this project aims at study how delivery precision and lead-time are built up, and potentially improved, in the test object process. What kind of activities needs to happen during the build of test objects, and what kind of activities are needed to ensure that materials are available, in time, for the test object build in China.
To conduct the thesis project both primary and secondary data has been gathered. Primary data, via interviews with around 20 different actors involved in the test object process, and secondary data from literature review and internal company documents. To treat the gathered data, Gantt-chart and process mapping has been used, in order to firstly, understand the process and conditions in which the test object process operates and secondly find risks for increased lead-time and improvement areas for reduced lead-time. Additionally, the process mapping view has its limitations and do not encompass all surrounding factors that could affect the test object process, thus an examination of these surrounding factors were made, targeted via the lens of organizational complexity.
Improvement areas for reduced lead-time and risks for increased lead-time could be identified and highlighted. To build test objects in China and sending parts over from Europe, the major barriers could be found in the lack of knowledge within the Volvo organization on how to manage the situation with difference business set-ups for Europe and China operations. A foundation for decreased lead-time in the test object process, and increased delivery quality, could be initiated by applying standardization and education, for various actors and activities in the test object process.


Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL

Multiple Myeloma (MM) remains the second most common hematologic malignancy occurring in adults, which affects primarily the skeletal system. Current therapies, which include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, autologouos stem cell transplantation and in some cases surgery, have the extended median survival between 3 and 10 years. However, MM is still incurable and therefore improving current therapies or developing novel ones to extend survival rate will be highly beneficial for patient management.

The long term goal of this study is to develop a novel therapeutic approach to the treatment of MM using genetically-engineered mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) for inhibiting osteoclast activity by stable expression of osteoprotegin (OPG). Studies have shown that osteoclast activity is increased in myeloma patients through increased expression of Receptor Activator of Nuclear Factor Kappa B Ligand (RANKL) leading to RANKL/RANK signaling, resulting in osteoclast activation and ultimately bone resorption. Osteoprotegerin is a soluble decoy receptor for RANKL, and is decreased in expression in myeloma patients possibly because of a marked decrease in osteoblast and or MSC, which produce OPG. Thus, we hypothesize that therapy with MSC, overexpressing OPG, will greatly decrease osteolytic damage and reduce morbidity. Despite the potential of OPG in inhibiting osteoclast activation, OPG also binds to tumor related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) making MM cells resistant to apoptosis.

In order to eliminate TRAIL binding while still possessing RANKL binding, we have created mutant OPG constructs by site-directed mutagenesis based on interactive domain identification, and superimposing structural models of TRAIL, OPG and DR5, the death receptor that binds to TRAIL. The mutant OPGs were produced in HEK 293 cells for characterization of the five potential mutants and their TRAIL binding ability. One of the mutants abolished TRAIL binding while possessing RANKL binding as determined by TRAIL assay and osteoclast assay respectively. Finally, to achieve biphasic effects of MSC-OPG therapy with anti-tumor activity, the regenerative MSC therapy will be tested in combination with chemotherapy and anti-angiogenic therapy. These studies are performed in preclinical mouse models of MM. Currently, other OPG mutants are being characterized for their RANKL and TRAIL binding properties which will be confirmed via the assays mentioned and immunoprecipitation. Thus far, we conclude that using site-directed mutagenesis targeted at the N-terminal of OPG effectively retains RANKL binding and abolishes TRAIL binding.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 3391. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-3391


Total and diffuse reflectance spectra were measured on Al surfaces covered with electrochromic W oxide films in colored and bleached states. Vector perturbation theory was used for analyzing the spectra. The diffuse reflectance appeared to originate from correlated (uncorrelated) interface roughness when the W oxide film was fully colored (bleached). Assuming partially correlated interfaces led to agreement between experimental and calculated spectra. The use of an electrochromic film appears a promising method to control the relative contributions of the interfaces to the resulting scattering.


The 17th century writer Thomas Traherne is increasingly being recognised and studied as a theologian as well as a poet. The discovery, in 1997, announced by the author of this volume, of five new prose works and a poetic work has given huge impetus to the study of Traherne in literature and theology. This affordable, concise introduction to Traherne's life and work concerns Traherne primarily as a theologian and places him in an historical and intellectual context he has thus far lacked. It demonstrates his distinctive contribution to Anglican theology. Consisting of a 10,000 word introductory essay and biography it is followed by extracts from Traherne's work under the following headings: Creatures and Powers, Holiness and Happiness, Sin and Salvation, Christian Liberty, Advice on Ministry, and Prayers.


Cloud computing seems to be the future the IT industry casts upon. The technological revolution was always orientated towards both the performance increasing and miniaturizing. Cloud technology strongly penetrated for the latest years. In their turn, the IT users apply it for storing up pieces of information as the following types: e-mail, electronic agenda and film stream.
 There are several types of Cloud Computing. The key factor of all of them is the elimination of the expensive IT resources. A cloud environment offers an illusion of processing and maintaining capacities. It is considered to be infinite, only the users and the work frequency are to be changed.
The usage of these services supposes the renouncement upon the own IT structure and the hiring the stocking units, as well as investments in order to accede different applications via Internet.The implementing of this method could create millions of working places; it is at the same time a friendly environment technology, as it uses less energy than the traditional solutions and offers a greater flexibility.
The affirmations we uttered above are the basic lines we started from.
At first we presented the general environment and the level of research in the field.
Then, the approaches we refer at are connected to the architecture of the Cloud resources, their design, negotiation, monitoring, reconfiguring and services based on agent.
After that we refer to the used platforms and structures that based on the interaction between the users and the suppliers; we stress that they have a determinant role for the realized scenarios.
In the end we jump at conclusions.


Phononic crystals are structures composed of periodically arranged scatterers in a background medium that affect the transmission of elastic waves. They have garnered much interest in recent years for their macro-scale properties that can be modulated by the micro-scale components. The elastic properties of the composite materials, the contrast in the elastic properties of the composite materials, and the material arrangement all directly affect how an elastic wave will behave as it propagates through the sonic structure. The behavior of an elastic wave in a periodic structure is revealed in its transmission bandstructure, and modification of any the elastic parameters will result in tuning of the band structure. In this dissertation, a phononic crystal with properties that can be modulated using electromagnetic radiation, and more specifically, radio-frequency (RF) light will be presented.


We examined the influence of mutations and karyotype on conventional treatment response, specifically hematological improvement in anemia, in primary myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Cytogenetic and next generation sequencing (NGS)‐derived mutation information was available in 357 patients (median age 74 years; 70% males); the revised international prognostic scoring system risk distribution was very high in 11%, high 15%, intermediate 17%, low 40% and very low 16%. At least one mutation was detected in 81% of patients; most frequent were SF3B1 (32%), ASXL1 (27%), TET2 (24%) and U2AF1 (15%). At median follow‐up of 24 months, treatment with hypomethylating agents (HMAs) was documented in 121 (34%) patients, lenalidomide (LEN) in 55 (15%), and erythropoiesis stimulating agents (ESAs) in 136 (38%). ASXL1 mutations adversely affected response to HMAs (27% vs 48%; P = 0.02) and LEN (9% vs 43%; P = 0.04), but not ESAs (P = 0.6). LEN response was also adversely affected by U2AF1 mutations (0% vs 42%; P = 0.02) and high risk karyotype (0% vs 41% in intermediate vs 47% in low risk; P = 0.01). Patients with SF3B1 mutations were more likely to respond to LEN (56% vs 27%; P = 0.04). Contrary to previous reports, we found no association between TET2 mutations and HMA treatment response (40% vs 41%; P = 0.9), even in the absence of ASXL1 mutations (P = 0.4).We conclude that ASXL1 mutations in MDS predict inferior response to treatment with both HMAs and LEN; response to LEN was also compromised by U2AF1 mutations and high risk karyotype; SF3B1 mutations identified patients likely to respond to LEN.


Recent advances in understanding the role of eukaryotic translation initiator factor 4E (eIF4E) in tumorigenesis and cancer progression have generated significant interest in therapeutic agents that indirectly or directly target aberrant activation of eIF4E in cancer. Here, we address the general function of eIF4E in translation initiation and cancer, present evidence supporting its role in cancer initiation and progression, and highlight emerging therapeutics that efficiently target hyperactivated eIF4E. In doing so, we also highlight the major differences between these therapeutics that may influence their mechanism of action. Clin Cancer Res; 16(20); 4914–20. ©2010 AACR.


A pack of batteries is one of the most important and expensive assemblies for an electric vehicle. A pack of batteries is comprised of several batteries connected in series. The number of the batteries connected depends on the operating voltage of the vehicle's on-board system as well as on the individual characteristics of the batteries used, e.g. the operating voltage of a single cell. One or several cells of a pack of batteries could be damaged if improperly exploiting an electric vehicle– excessively discharging the batteries or overloading the electric vehicle. If a self-converted vehicle does not use an intellectual BMS (battery management system) that can identify and register voltage drop for any individual cell in the high-load regime, e.g. when accelerating, it is difficult to identify and change the cells damaged. In case a cell does not demonstrate a complete failure, it is almost impossible to identify a defect in any regime other than the load regime. The research developed and compared three different methods for identifying defective battery cells. The methods were approbated on a converted Renault Clio. The experiment involved making voltage measurements in road tests, running the electric vehicle on a roll test bench and making voltage measurements of maximally discharged batteries in the no-load regime. A comparison of the measurement results revealed that the measurements made in the road tests were the most accurate and useful. After the experiment, the defective battery cells were replaced, thereby restoring the performance of the battery pack.


Time resolved spectroscopic investigation has been performed on nano-tetrapods, which are exotic nanocrystals with zinc blende type core structure and four arms with wurtzite structure. Dual emission is observed in these nanostructures. A band-edge emission occurs at 500-600 nm and a broad surface state emission occurs in the 600-900 nm region. The band-edge emission decays almost completely in a few ps, indicating the operation of an efficient trapping process. Incomplete recovery kinetics of ground state bleach from transient absorption experiments signifies the existence of a long-lived excited state. The lifetime of the surface state emission is in tens of nanoseconds. At liquid nitrogen temperature, surface state emission is enhanced to a greater degree than band edge emission, indicating suppression of various deactivation pathways at this temperature. Thus, an idea of excited state dynamics of these systems is developed, with a view of future tuning of photoluminescence properties by playing with the different radiative and nonradiative pathways involved.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


This article analyzes the reasons why food insecurity in Spain must increasingly be understood as lack of access to sufficient food resources to guarantee the survival and wellbeing of part of the population. Using data collected in an ongoing research project, two possible causes for this are explored. First, it is argued that certain positive developments that seemed firmly established, such as recognition of the right to an adequate diet and the leveling out of social differences in food consumption, are now being reversed by the current economic crisis. Second, the analysis focuses on strategies people in precarious circumstances use to obtain food, their relationship to health, and the need to take social inequality into consideration as an explanatory variable in accounting for different ways of procuring daily sustenance.


This is a working paper.

Clothing played an important role in a number of performance art events during the 1960s and 1970s. Performances such as Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964), Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 0 (1974) and Hannah Wilke's Super-T-Art (1974) implicated the viewer in an embodied relationship with the (un)dressed artist. In these works fabric was variously torn, bound, wrapped, folded and cut off the body. The movement of fabric as it is wrapped and gathered, the sound of cutting clothes away from the body and the charged atmosphere of a potentially violent encounter are all imagined in the photographs that exist of these works. This article explores the relationship between performance and photography in Yoko Ono's Cut Piece, a performance in which members of the audience cut fragments of clothing away from Ono's body. Far more than documents that record live events, as if supplementary to the real encounter, these photographs have their own aesthetic, which informs the way we 'remember' the performances and understand their significance. Using the dialogue Ono sets up between performance and photography, this article challenges the dominant feminist reading of scopic violence in Cut Piece and considers the work as an event scattered across time.


EBV, a human herpesvirus, is commonly acquired during childhood and persists latently in B cells. EBV seropositivity has been connected to immunomodulatory effects such as altered T and NK cell functional responses as well as protection against early IgE sensitization; however, owing to the asymptomatic presentation during childhood little is known regarding the infection process in children of different ages. In this study, we used mononuclear cells from cord blood and from 2- and 5-y-old EBV-naive children for in vitro EBV infection. We show that the degree of EBV-induced B cell activation and expansion differs between age groups and in particular in relationship to IFN-γ production capacity. EBV infection induced redistribution between B cell subsets with enrichment of IgD+CD27+ cells (commonly referred to as non–switched memory) in infected cord blood cell cultures, and of IgD−CD27+ cells (switched memory) in cell cultures from older children. We also related results to serostatus to CMV, a persistent herpesvirus that can affect differentiation status of T and NK cells. As compared with CMV− children, the EBV-induced enrichment of IgD−CD27+ B cells was significantly reduced in infected cell cultures from CMV+ children. This effect was associated with high levels of IFN-γ and frequencies of highly mature CD8+CD57+ T cells in CMV+ children. Our results demonstrate that both a child's age and serostatus to CMV will have an impact on EBV-induced B cell activation and expansion, and they point to the ability of viruses with immunomodulatory functions, such as CMV, to affect immune responses within the host system.


Consider a research lab that owns a patent on a new technology but cannot develop a marketable final product based on the new technology. There are two downstream firms that might successfully develop the new product. If the downstream firms' benefits from being the sole supplier of the new product are private information, the research lab will sometimes sell two licences, even though under complete information it would have sold one exclusive licence. This is in contrast to the standard result that a monopolist will sometimes serve less, but never more buyers when there is private information.


Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent technology of connecting and communicating people, process, devices, and data; and it is expected to facilitate future communication and to increase quality of lives. Due to a very wide range of application areas, this technology needs some requirements such as sensing the targets in the network field, minimizing energy consumption, connecting with other IoT devices securely. For these reasons, many constraints need to be taken into account when deploying devices into the field. In this study, a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) is proposed to relocate to IoT devices randomly distributed in a certain area to optimize the efficient and secure coverage problem. Simulation results are evaluated by comparing MOEA/D with another well-known algorithm called non-dominated sorting algorithm - II (NSGA-II). According to the results, there is a trade-off between the number of covered targets and the secure connection between devices. Also, MOEA/D achieves higher coverage ratio (higher number of covered targets), while NSGA-II provides higher number of secure connections.


CXCR4 is a chemokine receptor probably involved in the homing of metastatic breast cancer, and its expression is modulated by tumor environmental stimuli such as hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) and hypoxia. Here, we demonstrate that, depending on the stimulus, different transcription factors can cooperate in enhancing CXCR4 transcription in MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. In HGFtreated MCF-7 cells, the DNA binding of Ets1 activated by MAPK1/ERK1/2 transduction pathway as well as the DNA binding of NF-kB played a critical role in CXCR4 transcription and protein induction. Under HGF stimulation, the blockade of these transcription factors by dominant negatives and inhibitors prevented the expression of CXCR4 receptor, the activity of a gene reporter driven by CXCR4 promoter sequence and the chemoinvasion toward the CXCL12 ligand. NF-kB was activated also by hypoxia and contributed, with HIF-1, to the increase in CXCR4 expression. The results suggest that Ets1, specifically activated by HGF, might cooperate with NF-kB activity to enhance the invasive/metastatic phenotype of breast carcinoma cells.


Imaging of brain β-amyloid plaques with (18)F-labeled tracers for PET will likely be available in clinical practice to assist the diagnosis of Alzheimer disease (AD). With the rapidly growing prevalence of AD as the population ages, and the increasing emphasis on early diagnosis and treatment, brain amyloid imaging is set to become a widely performed investigation. All physicians reading PET scans will need to know the complex relationship between amyloid and cognitive decline, how to best acquire and display images for detection of amyloid, and how to recognize the patterns of tracer binding in AD and other causes of dementia. This article will provide nuclear medicine physicians with the background knowledge required for understanding this emerging investigation, including its appropriate use, and prepare them for practical training in scan interpretation.


Keyphrase extraction is the task of automatically selecting a small set of phrases that best describe a given free text document. Keyphrases can be used for indexing, searching, aggregating and summarizing text documents, serving many automatic as well as human-facing use cases. Existing supervised systems for keyphrase extraction require large amounts of labeled training data and generalize very poorly outside the domain of the training data. At the same time, unsupervised systems found in the literature have poor accuracy, and often do not generalize well, as they require the input document to belong to a larger corpus also given as input. Furthermore, both supervised and unsupervised methods are often too slow for real-time scenarios and suffer from over-generation. Addressing these drawbacks, in this paper, we introduce an unsupervised method for keyphrase extraction from single documents that leverages sentence embeddings. By selecting phrases whose semantic embeddings are close to the embeddings of the whole document, we are able to separate the best candidate phrases from the rest. We show that our embedding-based method is not only simpler, but also more effective than graph-based state of the art systems, achieving higher F-scores on standard datasets. Simplicity is a significant advantage, especially when processing large amounts of documents from the Web, resulting in considerable speed gains. Moreover, we describe how to increase coverage and diversity among the selected keyphrases by introducing an embedding-based maximal marginal relevance (MMR) for new phrases. A user study including over 200 votes showed that, although reducing the phrase semantic overlap leads to no gains in terms of F-score, our diversity enriched selection is preferred by humans.


SUMMARY: Fusarium moniliforme utilized the purines hypoxanthine, xanthine and uric acid as sole nitrogen sources. Allantoin and urea supported relatively more growth. The methylated purines caffeine and theobromine were not utilized. Uric acid, allantoic acid, glyoxylic acid and ammonia were detected in culture filtrates. Xanthine dehydrogenase, uricase, allantoinase, allantoicase and urease were present in cell homogenates and cell-free extracts. Uric acid was degraded to allantoic acid via allantoin.


Was there ever a more hollow and impotent piece of legislation than the UK's Fixed Term Parliaments Act? Trumpeted by the Conservative-led coalition as a way of stopping opportunist prime ministers ever again calling snap elections to capitalize on hefty poll leads - by complicating simple confidence votes in ways that prompted Labour to condemn it as a constitutional stitch-up - within six short years of receiving Royal Assent it has proved itself wholly incapable of doing any such thing. When it suited David Cameron to build a protective cordon around his unholy alliance with the Liberal Democrats, the Act was a useful confection: a road-block solid enough to stop either partner provoking an early return to the polls, by swerving out of the ministerial motorcade in a petulant huff. But the fact it could be so casually swept aside as soon as the Tories' stars were back in the ascendancy - like a trifling traffic cone in the residents' parking bay otherwise reserved for them outside Number 10 Downing Street - shows it wasn't worth the statute-book it was written on. We should repeal this zombie law at the earliest opportunity.


Ubiquitous positioning provides continuous positional information in both indoor and outdoor environments for a wide spectrum of location based service (LBS) applications. With the rapid development of the low-cost and high speed data communication, Wi-Fi networks in many metropolitan cities, strength of signals propagated from the Wi-Fi access points (APs) namely received signal strength (RSS) have been cleverly adopted for indoor positioning. In this paper, a Wi-Fi positioning algorithm based on neural network modeling of Wi-Fi signal patterns is proposed. This algorithm is based on the correlation between the initial parameter setting for neural network training and output of the mean square error to obtain better modeling of the nonlinear highly complex Wi-Fi signal power propagation surface. The test results show that this neural network based data processing algorithm can significantly improve the neural network training surface to achieve the highest possible accuracy of the Wi-Fi fingerprinting positioning method.


The past three years have seen the remarkable growth of publicly held real estate companies called Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT). The industry is still dominated by small, privately held firms but REITs and other large companies are emerging as major players. Organization strategy and structure issues have become very important managerial concerns because they are of concern to W,all Street underwriters. However, evidence suggests that many real estate companies do not have long-term strategic plans. Clearly, this long-term strategic thinking is necessary. The issue of organizational domain has received much attention in the strategic management literature (e.g., Subramanian et al., 1993; Kruger, 1989; Miles and Snow, 1978). This involves the key decision of determining the business or the portfolio of businesses the organization should be in. This domain choice requires the decision-maker's selection of the combination of the organization's specific product(s) and its target market(s). This strategic choice of product market domain is key because it creates the need for a particular organizational structure and supporting organizational processes to implement the strategy. Consistency between the chosen product market strategy and the supporting structure is a very important ingredient for success. Amburgey and Dacin (1994) report the existence of a hierarachial relationship between strategy and structure -- strategy being a more important determinant of structure than structure of strategy. A strategy issue currently facing real estate development firms is how to structure or restructure their organizations in order to improve performance. In a major review of the management literature, in search of lessons for development firms, Bhambri et al. (1991) note that real estate development firms take on various organizational structures -- smaller firms tend to be project oriented, large firms are either project or functionally oriented, or a mix of the two. Large firms may be groups of partnerships that are highly decentralized or the firms may be integrated with staff in functional areas and therefore more centralized. The question that these authors raise is: What are the advantages and disadvantages of these alternative organizational structures? As real estate developers begin to restructure and reorganize and add functions such as property management and brokerage, the issue of the appropriate structure becomes very important. This is especially so since a Laventhol and Horwath (1989) survey of over 1,000 real estate firms found that most firms tended to operate on a short-term planning horizon, and while 81% of the firms had operating plans that were updated annually, only 59% had long-term (3-5 year) strategic plans. However, the survey indicates, real estate companies are now becoming more interested in developing business strategies. Other studies of the real estate industry (e.g., Sriram and Anikeeff, 1991) have reported that none of the intended product market domain strategies is either more popular or leads to better performance among development companies. However, the issue of the consistent implementation of the chosen strategy was not investigated. Thus, this paper seeks to form a bridge between the strategic management and the real estate literature by extending Sriram and Anikeeff's (1991) findings by investigating the relationship between the consistency of implementation of strategy and performance. Therefore, the primary purpose of this paper is to see if consistent implementation of strategy -- the matching of the appropriate organizational structure to the strategy -- results in superior performance. The secondary purpose of this study is to investigate whether this consistency is associated with the age of the organization and its size. While previous research has found mixed evidence for the relationship between age and strategic choice and size and strategic choice, there has been no research which has studied the association of these two variables (age and size) with the consistent implementation of the chosen strategy. …


Edible oils are related directly to the health aspects of all the people .Edible oils have significant role in diet all around the world especially in India as Indian culture is based on idealism of well beings of all creatures of the earth. The chief contribution of fats and other lipids to the diet is their energy value and also satiety value. Fats are also acts as solvents and source for the fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, K and pro vitamin A, the carotene. Fats and other lipids also contribute essential fatty acids to the diet which body cannot synthesize. Lipids play roles in energy metabolism, as membrane constituents, thermal insulators and biological regulators. The production of natural and real oil seeds (which contains more than 40-75% oil content) may also contribute to the wellbeing of the people in the world through generating the employment to small farmers, small scale oil expellers and livelihood of consumers. Literature survey also reveals that traditional and natural edible oils like coconut, mustard, groundnut and sesame are being used in cooking vegetables, deep frying and for storage purposes as pickles from a long time worldwide especially in eastern countries like India, China and Japan. The virgin oil has been extracted through eco-friendly, cold pressing technique called 'Ghani', which extract the oil from seed at very low speed (which is an important factor to preserve the natural quality, components, specific color, flavor and odor of the oil) at room temperature between 25400C. The oil extracted through natural oil seeds of good quality with cold pressing techniques is fresh, healthy, pure, and rich in antioxidants and vitamins. These oils are more nutritious having essential fatty acids, vitamins, tocopherol, phytosterols etc., serve better to provide maximum energy for which oils have been consumed by humans .They may easily assimilated and digested in human body and provide many benefits without causing any harmful effect on health. According to literature of ancient Ayurveda, sesame oil is the best for edible purposes and which has been used as dressing oil on freshly cooked traditional food items made by regional food grains which are very nutritious in all means, though mustard, groundnut and coconut oils are not only healthy but possess medicinal properties as well whereas Safflower oil is said to be worst for eaten as an oil.


We analyze the size and power of a large number of "robust" asset pricing tests, investigating the hypothesis that the price of risk of a candidate factor is equal to zero. Different from earlier studies, our bootstrap approach puts all tests on an equal footing and focuses on sample sizes comparable to standard applications in asset pricing research. Thus, our paper provides guidance for researchers about which method to use. We find that the classic Fama-MacBeth/Shanken approach rarely over-rejects useless factors and provides a reasonable balance between size and power. In contrast, some of the "robust" methods suffer from poor power in realistic sample sizes, especially in situations where the asset pricing model is mildly misspecified.


Energy consumption has increasingly become a serious problem in contemporary data centres. The electricity bill contributes a significant fraction of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), and it is predicted to increase at an even faster pace in the following years as extremely large volume of data are being generated on a daily basis which would necessitate corresponding storage capacity to hold them. As a profitable work-around step toward the energy problem within the cloud infrastructure, in this paper, we propose REST, an energy-efficient cloud storage, which is built upon a cluster-based object store similar to GFS. It achieves high energyefficiency by cleverly exploiting the redundancy already present in the system without compromising the inherently well-established schemes for consistency, fault-tolerance, reliability, availability, etc., while maintaining a reasonable performance level. By modifying slightly the data-layout policy, REST can safely keep a large amount of the storage nodes in standby mode or even powered off entirely most of the time. Deploying a sophisticated monitor, it also provides the flexibility to power up sleeping or powered down nodes when necessary to accommodate to the variations in workloads. Trade-offs between energy efficiency and performance can be conveniently made by simply adjusting a trade-off metric in REST. The FileBench and real world workload experimental results demonstrate that power savings can reach 29% and 33%, respectively, while still providing comparable or even surprisingly better performance.


Novikov and Shiryaev (2004) give explicit solutions to a class of optimal stopping problems for random walks based on other similar examples given in Darling et al. (1972). We give the analogue of their results when the random walk is replaced by a Levy process. Further we show that the solutions show no contradiction with the conjecture given in Alili and Kyprianou (2004) that there is smooth pasting at the optimal boundary if and only if the boundary of the stopping reigion is irregular for the interior of the stopping region.


Transient Infrared Emission Spectroscopy (TIRES) is a new technique that reduces the occurrence of self-absorption in optically thick solid samples so that analytically useful emission spectra may be observed. Conventional emission spectroscopy, in which the sample is held at an elevated, uniform temperature, is practical only for optically thin samples. In thick samples the emission from deep layers of the material is partially absorbed by overlying layers.1 This self-absorption results in emission spectra from most optically thick samples that closely resemble black-body spectra. The characteristic discrete emission bands are severely truncated and altered in shape. TIRES bypasses this difficulty by using a laser to heat only an optically thin surface layer. The increased temperature of the layer is transient since the layer will rapidly cool and thicken by thermal diffusion; hence the emission collection must be correlated with the laser heating. TIRES may be done with both pulsed and cw lasers.2,3 When a pulsed laser is used, the spectrometer sampling must be synchronized with the laser pulsing so that only emission during and immediately after each laser pulse is observed.3 If a cw laser is used, the sample must move rapidly through the beam. The hot, transient layer is then in the beam track on the sample at and immediately behind the beam position, so the spectrometer field of view must be limited to this region near the beam position.2 How much self-absorption the observed emission suffers depends on how thick the heated layer has grown by thermal diffusion when the spectrometer samples the emission. Use of a pulsed laser synchronized with the spectrometer sampling readily permits reduction of the time available for heat diffusion to about 100 acs .3 When a cw laser is used, the heat-diffusion time is controlled by how small the spectrometer field of view is and by how rapidly the sample moves past within this field. Both a very small field of view and a very high sample speed would be required to attain a diffusion time of 100 μs. Accordingly, pulsed-laser TIRES generally produces spectra suffering from less self-absorption than cw-laser TIRES does, but the cw-laser technique is technically much simpler since no synchronization is required.


Patients after surgery introducing aortal valve prosthesis in cases of rheumatic aortal defect or defect due to bacterial endocarditis were examined using spiro- and bicycle ergometry. Two groups of patients were compared: those subjected to rehabilitation procedures and a control group undergoing no rehabilitation program. Functional results were better in post-rehabilitation patients. By the end of the rehabilitation program, the examined spiroergometric parameters were significantly closer to those of normal subjects, as compared to the controls. Spiroergometric investigation in patients with newly applied aortal valve prostheses supplements clinical data in providing a more profound functional evaluation of surgical results and rehabilitation efficiency.


abstract This report consists of a summary of the studies conducted on the subject of short-period (6.0-0.3 sec period) noise over a period of approximately three years. Information from deep-hole and surface arrays was used in an attempt to determine the types of waves of which the noise is composed. The theoretical behavior of higher-mode Rayleigh waves and of body waves as measured by surface and deep-hole arrays is described. Both surface and body waves are shown to exist in the noise. Surface waves generally predominate at the longer periods (of the period range discussed) while body waves appear at the shorter periods at quiet sites. Not all the data could be interpreted to define the wave types present.


In this work, we present a multi-scale modelling framework for the Ni-based oxygen carrier (OC) particle that can explicitly account for the complex reaction mechanism taking place on the contacting surface between gas and solid reactants in Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC). This multi-scale framework consists of a gas diffusion model and a surface reaction model. Continuum equations are used to describe the gas diffusion inside OC particles, whereas Mean-field approximation method is adopted to simulate the micro-scale events, such as molecule adsorption and elementary reaction, occurring on the contacting surface. A pure CO stream is employed as the fuel gas whereas the NiO is used as the metal oxide because it is one of the mostly used material in laboratory and pilot-scale plants. Rate constants for the micro-scale events considered in the present work were obtained from a systematic Density Functional Theory (DFT) analysis, which provides a reasonable elementary reaction kinetics and lays a solid foundation for multi-scale calculations. A sensitivity analysis on the size of intra-particle pore and the adsoprtion rate constant was conducted to assess the mass transport effects on the porous particle. The proposed multi-scale model shows reasonable tendencies and responses to changes in key modelling parameters.


Semantic computing aims to connect the intention of humans with computational content. We present a study of a problem of this type: extract information from large number of similar linguistic Web resources to compute various aggregations (sum, average,...). In our motivating example we calculate the sum of injured people in traffic accidents in a certain period in a certain region. We restrict ourselves to pages written in Czech language. Our solution exploits existing linguistic tools created originally for a syntactically annotated corpus, Prague Dependency Treebank (PDT 2.0). We propose a solutions which learns tree queries to extract data from PDT2.0 annotations and transforms the data in an ontology. This method is not limited to Czech language and can be used with any structured linguistic representation. We present a proof of concept of our method. This enables to compute various aggregations over linguistic Web resources.


Alternatives to the value of sales of agricultural products as a major determinant in defining and classifying farms are proposed. Problems in understanding the changing structure of U.S. agriculture in the past 30 years result from: (1) rapid changes in the levels of agricultural prices, (2) the adoption of new technology, and (3) the increased availability and use of off-farm jobs by members of farm operator families. It is suggested that our national statistics classify farms into three major categories: FULL-TIME, PART-TIME, and RESIDENTIAL. A shift away from values of sales as the major classifier of size distributions is encouraged. Labor used in agricultural production and standardized estimated of value added for each acre of crops or livestock unit are proposed to define and classify farms.


To test the suggestion that chlorpropamide-alcohol flushing (CPAF) resembles the disulfiram effect and might be mediated by acetaldehyde, the initial metabolite of alcohol, blood concentrations of acetaldehyde were measured after a drink of alcohol in controls and diabetics positive and negative for CPAF. The CPAF-positive diabetics had significantly greater blood acetaldehyde concentrations after alcohol than the CPAF-negative diabetics both with a single dose of chlorpropamide and after two weeks' chlorpropamide treatment. Concentrations in the CPAF-positive group after chlorpropamide were also significantly greater than after a placebo tablet. There was also a clear separation in the increase in facial temperature after two weeks of chlorpropamide between the CPAF-positive and CPAF-negative groups (although there was some overlap after a single tablet). There was no difference in plasma chlorpropamide or alcohol concentrations between CPAF-positive and CPAF-negative diabetics. These findings show that CPAF is distinct from alcohol flushing and that the acetaldehyde concentration in the blood provides an objective measure of CPAF. The difference between flushing and non-flushing diabetics cannot be accounted for by differences in blood concentrations of chlorpropamide or alcohol.


Large-scale auto-regressive language models pretrained on massive text have demonstrated their impressive ability to perform new natural language tasks with only a few text examples, without the need for fine-tuning. Recent studies further show that such a few-shot learning ability can be extended to the text-image setting by training an encoder to encode the images into embeddings functioning like the text embeddings of the language model. Interested in exploring the possibility of transferring the few-shot learning ability to the audio-text setting, we propose a novel speech understanding framework, WavPrompt, where we finetune a wav2vec model to generate a sequence of audio embeddings understood by the language model. We show that WavPrompt is a few-shot learner that can perform speech understanding tasks better than a naive text baseline. We conduct detailed ablation studies on different components and hyperparameters to empirically identify the best model configuration. In addition, we conduct a non-speech understanding experiment to show WavPrompt can extract more information than just the transcriptions. Code is available at https://github.com/Hertin/WavPrompt


Software products are often released with missing functionality or errors that result in failures in the field. In previous work, we presented the Gamma technology, which facilitates remote monitoring of deployed software and allows for a prompt reaction to failures. In this paper, we investigate one of the principal technologies on which Gamma is based: software tomography. Software tomography splits monitoring tasks across many instances of the software, so that partial information can be (1) collected from users by means of light-weight instrumentation and (2) merged to gather the overall monitoring information. After describing the technology, we illustrate an instance of software tomography for a specific monitoring task. We also present two case studies that we performed to evaluate the presented technique on a real program. The results of the studies show that software tomography can be successfully applied to collect accurate monitoring information using only minimal instrumentation on each deployed program instance.


Bismuth vanadate (BiVO4)-based photocatalysts as a typical solar-water-splitting material have attracted much interest due to their moderate band gap, fine hole conductivity and good stability. In this work, we perform a comprehensive first-principles study of the structural, electronic and optical properties of a black phosphorus BP/BiVO4 heterostructure, which was realized with remarkable performance in pure water splitting in a very recent experiment. Firstly, the optoelectronic properties and charge transport between BP and BiVO4 are systematically elucidated. We find that the positions of the valence/conduction band edge of BP and BiVO4 change with the Fermi level and form a type-II heterostructure with a high optical absorption coefficient. Furthermore, the charge density difference and Bader charge analysis indicated that the internal electric field will facilitate the separation of e−/h+ pairs at the BP/BiVO4 interface and restrain the carrier recombination. Therefore, the present work provides insightful understanding of the physical mechanism and superior photocatalytic performance of this new synthesized system and offers instructions for fabricating superior BiVO4-based heterostructure photocatalysts.


Energy harvesting systems that couple solar panels with supercapacitor buffers offer an attractive option for powering computational systems deployed in field settings, where power infrastructure is inaccessible. Supercapacitors offer a particularly compelling advantage over electrochemical batteries for such settings because of their ability to survive many more charge-discharge cycles. We share UR-SolarCap-a versatile open source design for such a harvesting system that targets embedded system applications requiring power in the 1-10 W range. Our system is designed for high efficiency and controllability and, importantly, supports auto-wakeup from a state of complete energy depletion. This paper summarizes our design methodology, and the rationale behind our design and configuration decisions. Results from the operation and testing of a system realized with our design demonstrate: 1) an achievable harvester efficiency of 85%; 2) the ability to maintain sustained operation over a two week period when the solar panel and buffer are sized appropriately; and 3) a robust auto-wakeup functionality that resumes system operation upon the availability of harvestable energy after a period in which the system has been forced into a dormant state because of a lack of usable energy. To facilitate the use of the system by researchers exploring embedded system applications in environments that lack a power infrastructure, our designs are available for download as an archive containing design schematics, Printed Circuit Board (PCB) files, firmware code, and a component list for assembly of the system. In addition, a limited number of pre-assembled kits are available upon request.


The research objective was to produce a model of learning entrepreneurship by using SWOT analysis, which was currently being run with the concept of large classes and small classes. The benefits of this study was expected to be useful for the Binus Entrepreneurship Center (BEC) unit to create a map development learning entrepreneurship. Influences that would be generated by using SWOT Analysis were very wide as the benefits of the implementation of large classes and small classes for students and faculty. Participants of this study were Binus student of various majors who were taking courses EN001 and EN002. This study used research and development that examining the theoretical learning components of entrepreneurship education (teaching and learning dimension), where there were six dimensions of the survey which was a fundamental element in determining the framework of entrepreneurship education. Research finds that a strategy based on a matrix of factors is at least eight strategies for improving the learning process of entrepreneurship. From eight strategies are one of them strategies to increase collaboration BEC with family support. This strategy is supported by the survey results to the three majors who are following the EN001 and EN002, where more than 85% of the students are willing to do an aptitude test to determine the advantages and disadvantages of self-development and more of 54% of the students are not willing to accept the wishes of their parents because they do not correspond to his ideals. Based on the above results, it is suggested for further research, namely developing entrepreneurship research by analyzing other dimensions.


In preparation for the upcoming (currently in draft form) Recommended Practice (RP) on Dent Assessment and Management (API 1183) [1], Explorer Pipeline Company, Inc. (Explorer) has performed an internal procedural review to determine how to effectively implement the methodologies into their Integrity Management Program (IMP). Explorer's pipeline system transports hazardous liquids and is comprised of over 1,800 miles of pipeline ranging in diameter from 3 to 28 inches. The majority of the system was installed in the 1970s, but parts of the system were also installed as early as the 1940s. The primary focus of this review and implementation into the IMP is in regard to performing and responding to in-line inspection (ILI) based integrity assessments.
 Prior to the development of API 1183, dent assessment and management consisted of following a set of prescriptive condition assessments outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 49, Part 195.452. In order to do this, pipeline operators required basic information, such as dent depth, orientation, and interaction with potential stress risers such as metal loss, cracks, gouges, welds, etc. However, in order to fully implement API 1183, additional parameters are needed to define the dent shape, restraint condition, defect interaction, and pipeline operating conditions.
 Many new and necessary parameters were identified throughout the IMP, from the very initial pre-assessment stage (new ILI vendor requirements as part of the tool/vendor selection process) all the way to defining an appropriate reassessment interval (new process of analyzing dent fatigue life).
 This paper summarizes the parameters of API 1183 that were not part of Explorer's current IMP. The parameters are identified, and comments are provided to rank the level of necessity from "must have" to "beneficial" (e.g. can sound and conservative assumptions be made when a parameter is not available). Comments are also provided to explain the impact of applying assumptions in place of parameters. The table of identified parameters should provide a useful tool for other pipeline operators who are considering implementing API 1183 as part of their overall IMP.


A novel reconfigurable antenna for dual-band operation is proposed. This antenna is composed of two square patches for lower frequency (patch 1) and upper frequency (patch 2), patch 2 being embedded in the centre cavity of patch 1. Frequency control can be realised using a switching circuit placed in the backside of the radiators without any switching components and capacitor variable components such as varactors, thus the proposed antenna can overcome the structural fragility of general reconfigurable antennas and operate in wideband with high gain characteristic (23% bandwidth with 8.4 dBi gain for band 1 and 12.1% with 9.0 dBi for band 2). Using the electrical and structural characteristics, the proposed antenna can be applied in base-station antennas providing multiple communication services.


Research studies have discovered that outsourcing has several benefits and the practice is fast replacing in-sourcing especially with regard to construction consultants. In the attempt to examine the benefits of the two approaches on project outcome, this study investigates the influence of the use of in-sourced and outsourced consultants on project performance in Nigeria. The objectives are to determine the use of in-sourcing and outsourcing for selected consultants, compare the use of the two approaches in project delivery and their influence on project performance and compare the performance of projects in which in-sourced and outsourced selected consultants were engaged. To achieve these objectives, a questionnaire design approach was adopted. A field survey involving a sample of 164 projects were selected by stratified random sampling. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and analysed using percentage, mean, Spearman and t-tests. The results of the study reveal that clients engage both in-sourced and outsourced consultants in project development and that the practice has significant influence on project performance. It also discovered that the use of the two approaches has differing benefits on project delivery time and cost. The study concludes that in-sourcing and outsourcing are common practices in project development and that clients are facing a challenge in deciding which approach to adopt. The study also discovers that both approaches has benefits associated with project outcome and suggests that clients should consider these benefits in their decision to in-source or outsource consultants.


The role of brain angiotensin II (ANG II) in mediating cardiovascular, vasopressin, and renin responses to hemorrhage was assessed in conscious spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and in normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) and Wistar rats. Intracerebroventricular administration of losartan (10 micrograms) and saralasin (1 microgram.microliter-1.min-1) produced a markedly greater fall in blood pressure and a reduced tachycardia during and after hemorrhage (15 ml/kg) compared with the artificial cerebrospinal fluid control in SHR and Wistar rats but not in WKY rats. Vasopressin release after hemorrhage was also impaired, but renin release was enhanced by intracerebroventricular ANG II antagonists in SHR and Wistar rats but not in WKY rats. Losartan and saralasin produced remarkably similar effects on the cardiovascular, vasopressin, and renin responses to hemorrhage. These data suggest that brain ANG II acting through AT1 receptors plays an important physiological role in mediating rapid cardiovascular regulation and vasopressin release in response to hemorrhage. The relative importance of brain angiotensin system may vary in different strains of rate.


When assessing the robustness, vulnerability or resilience of transportation networks, topological performance indicators of the considered network are often used. Approaches that integrate operating conditions and organisational aspects are sorely lacking in the literature. In this paper, mass railway transportation network's performance indicators that take into account the operating conditions of the system are presented. Time-varying graph is used to formalise these performance indicators. An application to Paris railway transportation system is performed in this paper. We also compare these operating-conditions dependent indicators with the topological indicators of the studied network. This study shows that without perturbation, topological and operating-conditions based indicators give quite the same results. During perturbations, interdependencies and passager flow within the network make topological indicators less efficient. Nevertheless, topological indicators reveal the relevance of some railway transportation system's components that are also relevant to operating-conditions based indicators. In term of operating-conditions based indicators, they reveal some components that are not topologically relevant but which become relevant when we take operating conditions into account.


Haloperidol, moperone, pipamperone and bromperidol were found measurable with high sensitivity by gas chromatography (GC) with surface ionization detection (SID). The calibration curves using moperone as internal standard were linear in the range of 0.4-4 pmol on column for haloperidol, pipamperone, and bromperidol. The detection limit of the drugs was about 0.1 pmol on column. For their actual determination with forensic samples, a detailed procedure for their extraction from human whole blood and urine was established with Sep-Pak C18 cartridges. The recovery of the 4 drugs, which had been added to whole blood and urine, was more than 90%. Haloperidol in whole blood and urine of a schizophrenic patient, who had been administered with this drug (3 mg/day p.o.), could be quantitated by the present GC-SID, and the levels were 7.18 and 43.2 pmol/ml, respectively.


This paper deals with the questions of how network proximity influences the structure of inter-regional collaborations and how it interacts with geography. I first introduce a new, theoretically grounded measure of inter-regional network proximity. Then, I use data on European scientific co-publications in the field of chemistry between 2001 and 2005 to assess those questions. The main findings reveal that inter-regional network proximity is important in determining future collaborations but its effect is mediated by geography. Most importantly, a clear substitution pattern is revealed showing that network proximity benefits mostly international collaborations.


The aim of this essay is to examine the ways in which Beijing perceives the issues of Tibet and Xinjiang differently in the context of its geostrategic thinking in international politics today. In doing so, this essay will provide a deeper understanding of Beijing's different geostrategic sensibilities of Tibet and Xinjiang in regard to rising China's national security interests in Central and South Asia. This essay argues that, although Beijing publicly sees the Tibet and Xinjiang problems as issues of securing Chinese sovereignty, geostrategically Beijing alludes to a subtle difference in its perception of the two regions: (i) the Tibet problem is a practical, domestic issue to be handled by Beijing's paternalistic engagement of modernization, and is a symbolic issue regarding how to manage rising China's benign image abroad while harshly oppressing any separatist voices in Tibet; and (ii) in Beijing's geostrategic thinking, Xinjiang's security importance seems to be defined in terms of energy security for China's economic growth, which is integral to social stability and the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy, as well as the transnational Islamic terrorist movement interlinked with Uyghur separatism in Xinjiang.


Internet Protocol version 4 addresses are running low. Research has led to Internet Protocol version 6, which is about to take over and replace the Internet Protocol version 4. A new technique leads to a lot of new knowledge that many in today's society can´t handle. In this project, we produced a new product that makes it easier for those who want to take the plunge into the new technology. We used a Raspberry Pi which was configured to an Internet Protocol Version 6-gateway by creating a 6in4-tunnel to the ISP Hurricane Electric. To get connected to the Internet Protocol version 6-internet using our product you just need a quick configuration and an Internet connection. After a lot of testing we know that our product is most suitable for home-LAN:s and small business-networks. It is capable of managing traffic at a rate of 43.66 Mbits/s.


Urban management in today's competitive world should be able to identify city's strengths and weaknesses and improve its competitive advantages. The importance of urban management in order to access to urban sustainable development is to improve citizens' conditions and quality of life, protect city's physical environment, enhance citizens' trust level to urban management, and improve their participation level in managing urban affairs. On the other hand, media, as a powerful component of civil society, affect different parts of the community; therefore, this research explains the role of mass media in urban management. Research methodology is survey. Statistical population includes clients of 22district of Tehran Municipality in 2014. 400 of them were selected as sample research by stratified cluster random sampling. To collect data, research-made questionnaire, including 24 questions, was used. It was obtained by interviewing with experts. Its face validity was confirmed and its reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha. In order to analyze data statistically, one-sample t-test, ANOVA, and Lee Hee tests were used. The results indicated that the role of mass media in urban management is more than average. However, mass media influence more on improvement of citizen's participation in administering urban affairs and it affects citizen's trust level less.


Three observations of the economic production quantity model with imperfect quality items with/without inspection are presented in this report.
Salameh and Jaber (2000) and Maddah and Jaber (2008) models do not meet their
expected objective functions. The first observation tries to clarify the relationships among their expected objective functions and the actual ones through the derivation, the numerical simulation and statistical comparison. This report concludes s that both models are not very accurate, but capable.

Khan et al. (2011) and Khan et al. (2014) ignored the independent condition of properties of the expectation of random variables, which resulted in minor errors in both papers. The second and the third observations are the corrections of the models of two papers, respectively. Numerical comparisons show the differences between the original models and the revisions are minor, but significant. An example of a multi-factor sensitivity analysis is shown in this report.


Sodium retention during stress (retainer) is known to increase the risk of hypertension and other diseases. Our group has previously shown that angiotensin II type I receptor blockade improves natriuresis in retainers. Since our pre-clinical studies demonstrate that angiotensin II inhibits endothelin-1 (ET-1) dependent natriuresis, we predict that ET-1 may be linked to the response. We hypothesize that reduction in urinary (renal) ET-1 accounts for derangements in sodium handling under stress, a link never before explored in a large human cohort. We evaluated urinary ET-1 and albumin excretion in 4 studies of stress-induced pressure natriuresis, of which 3 were observational studies with 776 healthy youth (15 - 19 years) enrolled in a 5 hr protocol (1 hr of mental stress before and after 2 hrs of rest). The 4th study involved 213 African American adults (18 - 54 years) in a double blind crossover trial comparing irbesartan (angiotensin II type I receptor antagonist) to placebo. The protocol entailed 7 days of vehicle (placebo or irbesartan 150 mg P.O.) followed by a 3 hr protocol (1 hr of rest before and after 1 hr of mental stress). In all studies, 60 min urine samples were obtained. Subjects were grouped as retainers or excreters if they retained or excreted sodium under stress. In the observational studies, mean change in ET-1 between stress and baseline was significant (p<0.001), being negative (mean= -0.0154 pmol/min) in retainers but positive (mean= 0.0194 pmol/min) in excreters. ET-1 excretion was significantly higher (p<0.028) in retainers than excreters at baseline but significantly lower in retainers under stress (p<0.0001). ET-1 excretion continued to decline in retainers during recovery but returned to pre-stress levels in excreters. Albumin excretion and albumin to creatinine ratio were significantly higher in retainers (p<0.046, p<0.008, respectively). During stress, the irbesartan group had significantly higher ET-1 excretion than placebo (p<0.001). Thus loss of ET-1-dependent natriuresis may account for sodium retention during stress and correction of sodium handling re-establishes ET-1-mediated natriuresis. Retainers have both lower ET-1 excretion and increased albuminuria, suggesting renal impairment and risk for future diseases.


Routine hematology tests (Hb, Hct, RBC, WBC, PLT) generally done by automation methods using a hematology analyzer. Ideally, the examinations should be done as soon as possible, although, in some circumstances, it can be delayed. Based on the literature, the sample for routine hematology testing should be processed within 4 – 8 hours of venesection. Some studies revealed that the sample could be stored for up to 48 hours, and it can be influenced by the technology applied to the hematology analyzer. Studies conducted to see the stability of the samples using a hematology analyzer with impedance technology. Tests performed on whole blood samples collected from 12 ostensibly healthy individuals, immediately after collection (fresh sample, <1hour) and 2h, 4h, 6h, 8h, 24h, 48h afterward. The samples stored at room temperature (20-240C) and 2-60C. There are no significant differences after 48 h under different storage conditions for Hb, Hct, RBC, PLT count, except for WBC count that has a significant difference at temperature 2-60C. CV for Hb, Hct, RBC, PLT, WBC count is less than 5% at room temperature. WBC and PLT count have a CV of more than 5% at 2-60 C. Sample for Hb, Hct, RBC was found to be stable up to 48 h at room temperature and 2-60C. PLT and WBC count were stable for 48 h if stored at room temperature.


This study was designed to find the frequency of different abnormalities that can be observed in the results of thyroid function tests in patients with chronic renal failure, who are on hemodialysis, to assess the effect of having chronic renal failure on these frequencies, and to assess effect of age, duration of chronic renal failure, total serum protein level and serum albumin level of the results of thyroid function tests in patients with chronic renal failure, who are on hemodialysis. So that 35 patients with chronic renal failure and on hemodialysis had been randomly selected from those who attended the hemodialysis unit at Al-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital during the period from July 2016 to February 2017, Age and sex matched control had been selected randomly (35 patients). Detailed questionnaire had been applied containing information about the personal information and risk factors. All of the patients investigated for thyroid function tests and total serum protein and serum albumin levels. This study had shown there is general tendency of all thyroid function tests to be low but with the normal range, this tendency had been shown according to age, duration of chronic renal failure, level of serum albumin and total serum protein. Lower T3 levels are associated statistically with older age, and lower serum albumin levels. Lower TSH is associated with older age and higher total serum protein levels.